Fwc Riles Up Local Hunters

Outdoors

For the first time in his life, Florida native Charles Edwards Jr. won't be deer hunting in his home state this year.

Edwards, 41, blames the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission for his exodus.

He said the commission's method of awarding hunt permits to the Miami Corporation Wildlife Management Area effectively shut him and his 75-year-old father out of the area.

So they are paying $500 to hunt a private lease in Georgia.

"I was born in Winter Park and have been hunting in Florida since I was 16 -- 25 years -- and it's pretty bad when you've got to go out of state to hunt," Edwards said.

He now lives in Mount Dora with his father, and the 52,000-acre Miami tract north of Lake Monroe is the nearest public area for them.

"We've hunted there a bunch of times in the past, but this year, I got pulled for the Tide Swamp, and that's too far to go and be caring for a 75-year-old man," he said.

On the Georgia tract, he'll have help from the landowners' family.

Edwards is one of a number of local hunters upset with the FWC for its method of handing out permits to hunt the Miami Corp. property.

On most public hunting areas, applicants are selected by a random computer drawing.

For the Miami Corp. land and for five other "user-pay areas" where the commission charges a higher fee, the permits are handed out on a first-come, first-served basis.

The areas all are private lands which the state leases for public hunting. Competition from private hunt clubs threatened the FWC with loss of some of the lands, so the commission devised the user-pay scheme.

Under the plan, a hunter pays from $98 to $225 for a permit, depending on the area. On state-owned public hunting areas, hunters pay only $26.

When the commission instituted the system on the Miami Corp. tract three years ago, longtime hunters of the property were afraid they'd be shut out.

Under the user-pay plan, the number of permits available declined from 1,000 to 875.

As FWC Executive Director Allan Egbert explained in a letter to the elder Edwards, "the traditional users of Miami Corporation WMA requested the permits be issued on a first-come, first-served basis, . . . because it provides opportunities for individuals to make an extra effort [like hiring a courier service, grouping applications and waiting in line] . . . and rewards the most earnest permit applicants."

In addition, wrote Egbert: "Many of these people had been hunting Miami Corporation WMA for many years, and the commission did not want to displace them with the new user-pay program and a random drawing for permits."

The letter ended suggesting Edwards call another FWC employee for "additional information on public hunting opportunities in your area."

Meanwhile, Owen Boyd, the Deltona man who first raised complaints about the first-come, first-served system, said he is circulating a petition asking the commission to return to the random drawing system.

"I find this all to be absolutely ludicrous,'' he said. "They cannot set this up as a private playground for the select few," he said.

Boyd started complaining after two groups -- the Farmton Hunters and Sportsmen's Association and the New Smyrna Gun Club -- got most of the slots that had come open at the Miami tract for this hunting season. The groups hired a courier, and members took turns for days saving the first spot in the line at the fish and wildlife commission's Tallahassee headquarters.

But Scott Simmons, president of the Farmton group, said it was not trying to lock non-members out of hunting the Miami area.

"Last year, we took permit applications to Tallahassee for several people who were not members,'' Simmons said. "We do not use the permits as a recruitment tool for membership."